[Robotics] Blender and academic world

[Herman Bruyninckx]

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009, Séverin Lemaignan wrote:

>> I am rather happy with the semantics of "sensor" and "actuator" and
>> "controller" in the Game Engine, since these meanings correspond _very_
>> well to the common meaning in robotics :-)
>
> Just to underline that in Damien's case, they want to use external
> devices as sensors to control things inside Blender (which match the
> GameEngine "sensor" concept) while "sensor" can be used as well as
> "simulated sensors" (either proprioceptive or exteroceptive, as stated
> by Herman), and in this case, the sensors values would be outputs of the
> simulator, to be used in external application (robotic software in our
> cases).

Indeed, this is an important insight to keep in mind! :-)

But how do you see the way to follow to get this "simulated sensor"
information from Blender to your real robot? Via (Python, C++) code in the
corresponding "sensor" block in the Game Engine, or via an GE 'actuator'
(because Blender then 'actuates' your external robot...)

Whatever we choose, the C++ additions to and from the GE blocks are a very
worthwhile addition, I think. It was not very clear to me what the C++ code
does exactly: does it open a "device driver" on the Blender host? Does it
open a "TCP socket", or a similar "network"-like communication?

> Herman, I put your summary of "actuators/sensors/controllers" on the
> wiki since it's an excellent introduction, I think.

Fine, thanks!

Herman